


Unsaid

by Blossomwitch



Category: Saiyuki (Anime & Manga), Saiyuki Gaiden
Genre: Banter, Bittersweet, Falling In Love, Foreshadowing, Friends to Lovers, Late Night Conversations, Light Angst, M/M, OTP Feels, Realization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29566554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blossomwitch/pseuds/Blossomwitch
Summary: Two months into their relationship, Kenren thinks he's starting to figure Tenpou out. But he's unprepared for how much Tenpou seems to understand him in return. "What you need most in the world is something to give you purpose and direction. And what I need most in the world is something--anything--that will keep me from losing my mind." In the unexpected moment when casual things become serious and lovers fall in love, Tenpou cautions Kenren that some things are better left unsaid. But his reasons for keeping quiet are far from usual.
Relationships: Kenren Taishou/Tenpou Gensui
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Some people might know that I once posted a Yu Yu Hakusho fanfic, Deathmatch, with the note that I had been working on it for 7 years. 
> 
> I've been working on this one longer. 
> 
> The reason, in both cases, is that I feel Extremely Strongly about what I'm trying to say and it's taken that long to realize I can't say it any better than this. 
> 
> (Tenpou's quotes throughout this fic are all from Rumi; specifically Don't Sleep Now, We're Not Afraid Of God's Blade, and In The Arc Of Your Mallet.)

UNSAID

"Don't sleep now."

"Hm?" Kenren said drowsily.

Tenpou's voice continued, slow and mellow. At some point Kenren realized Tenpou wasn't issuing a command, but reciting something he had memorized. "Let the turning night wheel through this circle. Your brow, the moon, this lantern we sleep with. Stay awake with these lights. Don't sleep."

Kenren wondered--as he almost always did--what Tenpou was thinking. He certainly hadn't been about to fall asleep--granted, he was sprawled naked across Tenpou's bed, lazy and sated in the way only good sex could make you feel, but Tenpou had to know by now Kenren wasn't the kind of person who just fell asleep after sex. "Who said that?"

"Hm?" Tenpou said, turning his head slightly to look at Kenren with an expression that suggested Kenren had interrupted his thoughts.

"Who said that?" Kenren repeated. "Who are you quoting?"

"Oh--I'm not sure. A poet."

"One of ours?" Kenren asked, already guessing the answer would be no. Tenpou didn't use a respectful tone when he quoted gods.

"No, from the living world. There's a book around here somewhere," Tenpou said, a tiny frown line appearing on his forehead. He propped himself up on one elbow, looking around the room.

Kenren's hand shot out, gently but firmly pushing Tenpou back down. "No way. I believe you that it was a poet from living world. That's enough."

Tenpou made a small "hm" noise, allowing himself to be guided back into a prone position with a willingness that suggested he wouldn't have gotten very far even if Kenren hadn't stopped him. Kenren suppressed his sigh of relief. He was in no mood to deal with the Perpetual Stuff Avalanche. Not now. He'd already spent more time taking care of Tenpou's things in the two months he'd been assigned here than he had spent taking care of his own possessions in his entire life. Tenpou had absolute recall of what he did and did not own, total attachment to all of it, and zero interest in caring for any of it. Not to mention apparent immunity to its problems. It was up to Kenren to keep the Perpetual Stuff Avalanche off the bed, as he'd discovered to his dismay that Tenpou had no aversion to having sex atop piles of heavens-knew-what. Which, once the urgency of it had faded, was a rather _uncomfortable_ experience. So Kenren defended his territory.

Tenpou nudged Kenren to get his attention and gestured at his coat, lying discarded on Kenren's side of the bed. Kenren wordlessly fished Tenpou's cigarettes out of the pocket, and grabbed the little pewter ashtray he'd hidden under the headboard. He'd learned that Tenpou, if left to his own devices, would scatter ash across the bed, which accounted for the multiple small burn marks in the sheets. Maybe Kenren should get him some new ones.

_Listen to yourself, General. Thinking about buying the guy sheets. You've lost it._

Kenren helped himself to one of Tenpou's cigarettes, since his own had been left on the other side of the room with his clothes. Tenpou lit it for him. "Don't sleep."

Kenren took a deep drag. "Tenpou, do I look like I'm asleep?"

"I don't think so," Tenpou said gravely, his tone implying _but I'm not a hundred percent sure_.

Kenren didn't respond right away. He was still feeling sated, and almost considered letting it go. But he enjoyed Tenpou's strangeness. He enjoyed all of it, even the parts that should have pissed him off, like how much help Tenpou needed to accomplish routine tasks or how selfish he could be in the field. And beyond simple amusement or fondness, he was coming to genuinely love puzzling out the thought process behind Tenpou's odd statements.

So instead of shrugging and saying _whatever_ , Kenren decided to dive in. "Are _you_ asleep?"

"I don't think so," Tenpou said again, with just as much doubt. He was watching Kenren with that total, inscrutable focus he sometimes had. It was a look that made Kenren feel naked--not naked in way he actually was at the moment, but soul-naked. Like he was truly being seen, whether he wanted to be or not.

Lately, he wanted to be.

"You're going to have to give me something more to go on," Kenren said. "I mean, I've heard of talking in your sleep, but never smoking, so I'd say we're awake."

Tenpou glanced over Kenren's shoulder, and dammit if Kenren didn't feel the loss of _being seen_ like it was a physical thing. "That book--it's paperback. It has yellow and white flowers on the cover."

Kenren sighed, allowing himself to feel aggravated for a moment, and then he gave in. Tenpou wouldn't finish his thought until he'd found whatever piece of miscellania was associated with it. "All right, we'll find the damn book."

He was several steps away from the bed before he realized Tenpou wasn't following him, and turned back to glare. "The _hell_ if you're not helping me!"

"Oh." Tenpou, as ever, managed to look innocent. Kenren, as ever, didn't believe it for a second.

Tenpou thought the book was in the office, so they lit lamps and started combing the shelves. Kenren had spent all day two days ago cleaning in here, and it was already beginning to revert to chaos--but for some reason, the thought that he would just have to do it over again soon wasn't particularly irritating. It was hard to get worked up at a guy who was currently standing stark naked in front of a bookshelf, squinting to read the titles without his glasses, completely self-absorbed and unaware of Kenren's gaze. Kenren liked that lack of self-consciousness in Tenpou. He had even begun to appreciate how easily Tenpou became absorbed by the Perpetual Stuff Avalanche. He thought he was starting to understand why.

"Hey, Tenpou?" he asked, as he moved a precariously balanced stack of baseball cards out of his way, scanning the shelves.

"Hm?" Tenpou said absently, running his fingers over a row of books.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you think the living world beats the shit out of heaven."

"Mm. How heretical of you, General," Tenpou replied, not looking at him.

"But it's not just that, is it?"

"Just what?"

Kenren tried to find the words for what he wanted to express. "I mean, this stuff you collect... it isn't just a quirk. It's your way of trying to make heaven a bit more like down there. Or at least, to make your quarters a sanctuary from how stupid and crazy everything is. You like the living world's craziness better because at least it's honest, right?"

There was no immediate response. Kenren stopped hunting for the book and looked at Tenpou--and found Tenpou facing him, the book held loosely in one hand, looking at him with surprise and interest. "Right."

That was all he said. After a moment, he turned and went back into the bedroom. He touched Kenren lightly as he walked past, one hand brushing casually over his back in a way that let Kenren know he was expected to follow. Kenren stayed behind long enough to put out their lights, a nervous feeling forming in the pit of his stomach.

That startled look—that hint of vulnerability, of hearing your inner world described by someone else. _Why the hell did I go and say that?_ He'd wanted to show Tenpou he understood; wanted, maybe, to prove he was smart enough to keep up with him. But, like an idiot, he'd just gone and said whatever was in his mind, and now he'd brought a painful reality into bed with them.

Tenpou was sitting cross-legged on the bed when Kenren came into the room, apparently absorbed in the book. Kenren sat next to him and put an arm around him. "Hey, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

Tenpou looked startled. "Oh? You shouldn't have?"

"Well—no, not if it was going to get you down."

Tenpou seemed to consider this for a moment before he smiled softly. "You know," he said, "for a man of your vocation, you are unusually sensitive to other people's emotions."

He said it as though he'd just discovered a bit of trivia that interested him; but Kenren felt a stab of shame, like some voice out of his past was telling him he wasn't acting like a soldier, like a _man_. His reaction must have showed on his face, because Tenpou went on. "Oh, I don't mean it in a bad way. It's merely a trait, which could be good or bad depending on how you use it. Although," he added, a guarded look entering his eyes, "I do think you've been wise to conceal it from others as much as you have. And I would recommend you continue to do so." He smiled mirthlessly, a quick movement of the lips that didn't reach his eyes. "I won't tell."

Kenren found himself with nothing to say. Tenpou returned to the book, thumbing through the pages thoughtfully. He gave a small laugh as he glanced at one page. "Listen to this. 'We're not afraid of God's blade, or of being chained up, or of having our heads severed. We're burning up quickly, tasting a little hellfire as we go. You cannot imagine how little it matters to us what people say.' Can you imagine being human?"

Kenren detected a note of genuine longing underneath Tenpou's amusement, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it. He deflected. “That's not what you were quoting earlier.”

"True. I suppose it isn't really bedroom talk, either. There's some that can be interpreted in a romantic vein, if you like.” Kenren couldn't tell if Tenpou was teasing him or disappointed in him, but either way, he sensed a withdrawal. Tenpou flicked to a different page with the surety of someone who knew what they were looking for, and began to read again. "'Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me, or on the ground, in this world or that world, without my being in its happening. There's nothing worse than walking out along the street without you. I don't know where I'm going. You're the road, and the knower of roads, more than maps, more than love.'" He glanced at Kenren. "I didn't think you'd let me keep going. Love poetry doesn't seem like your style."

"You're not trying to be mushy. You're trying to tell me something." Kenren knew he was right by the gleam in Tenpou's eyes; knew not only that he was right, but that he'd been wrong to back away from it before. "I'm trying to understand."

Tenpou shut the book and put it down. Kenren quickly picked it up again and leaned over to put it on the nightstand, his instinct to defend the bed from the Perpetual Stuff Avalanche already deeply ingrained. When he turned back, he found Tenpou had shifted to face him, sitting cross-legged and knee to knee with him. "Maybe I should just say what I'm thinking."

Kenren almost responded sarcastically that yeah, that would help. But then he saw Tenpou's expression, completely earnest and a little tentative. It occurred to him that for someone who had always been exponentially smarter and unfathomably stranger than everyone around him, the concept of speaking his thoughts plainly might be a novel one.

"Yeah, I want you to," Kenren said, trying to strike the right balance of casual and sincere. He was surprised to find how much the idea that Tenpou couldn't just tell him whatever was in his mind bothered him.

"I have a theory." Tenpou paused, and then seemed to start over. In a different tone, light and matter-of-fact, he said, "You're a drifter. You pretend to be enslaved by your baser instincts, and behave as though you don't care about anything. In truth, you care so much you can't stand it. You also pretend to be stupid. But what you actually are is angry. You're very angry, and I think you've been that way for so long you're not sure why you're angry anymore. You lash out indiscriminately because you don't know where to direct that anger. You know, or at least guess, that there is a greater meaning to life than this; but you can't find it, and so you siphon your energy into fighting or seducing everyone you meet." Tenpou paused. "Am I right so far?"

Whatever Kenren had done to Tenpou earlier, pointing out the real reason behind his collection, he was reaping the result tenfold. He ought to feel shaken; but he didn't, not really. He felt... clarity. He couldn't have put half of what Tenpou had just said into words, but he felt the truth of each sentence as it was spoken, resonating like he was a harp string someone had just plucked. In two months, Tenpou had learned more about him than he knew about himself. “Yeah. That's pretty much it.”

Tenpou continued. His tone was so matter-of-fact he could have been relaying troop deployments, but Kenren had the feeling he was only warming up. "I, by contrast, have always faced greater internal threats than external ones," he said. "I'm just as angry as you are, but I can see more of the system than you do. And because I can't change that system, I retreat. I barricade myself in here, with my 'honest bit of craziness' as you called it. I collect fascinations and esotericisms and small disconnected bits of knowledge until my mind is going a thousand directions at once and I can forget everything. I'm safe from my own anger, but I'm so deep in my own world that I can barely navigate the real one." Tenpou blinked. "I'm not sure I'm sane," he said softly. He looked surprised, and disturbed, and so vulnerable it was all Kenren could do to just sit there instead of grabbing him and kissing him to distract him. He managed to keep himself still, since he wanted to hear the end of Tenpou's thought; but it was a strange and awful feeling, sitting there and wordlessly watching Tenpou contemplate his own sanity. Like something Kenren hadn't even known he had was breaking.

Eventually, Tenpou's eyes refocused on him. “This is my theory,” he said, as though there had been no pause. "What you need most in the world is something to give you purpose and direction. And what I need most in the world is something--anything--that will keep me from losing my mind."

That was as much as Kenren could stand. He hoped Tenpou was done speaking, because the thing in Kenren that was breaking apart compelled him to lean forward, take the back of Tenpou's head in his hand, and kiss him deeply. “I want to be that thing,” he said, breathless, against Tenpou's lips. “I can--”

"Shhh." Tenpou kissed him thoroughly, leaning over him, pushing him back onto the bed.

Kenren was more than happy to go along with that, but when their lips parted, he tried again. "I can be--"

"Shhh,” Tenpou shushed him again, this time more urgently. “Don't say it too loud. Don't say it at all.”

Kenren didn't understand, but he acquiesced. Tenpou was doing to him what he'd been aching to do to Tenpou a moment ago: distracting him so thoroughly he couldn't keep a thought together in his head. It was so easy to follow Tenpou's lead, to give in, to pick up where they'd left off earlier that night. _He knows what I mean_ , Kenren thought as comfort to himself, before he gave up thinking altogether. _And if he doesn't want me to talk, then I'll show him._

Sex had always been casual between them so far, full of talk and laughter and experimentation, but that couldn't be further from the case now. Speech was banished and the only sound was their ragged breathing, their gasps and whimpers. Tenpou, usually relaxed and playful, now touched him in a wholly different way than he ever had before--somehow gentle and intense at the same time, searing, precise. _Reverent,_ if the word could be applied to something so carnal. To speak would have been blasphemy.

Kenren despised clingy lovers, but nonetheless he found himself unable to do much besides hold on—digging his fingers into Tenpou's hips, digging his teeth into Tenpou's neck, wrapping himself around Tenpou and willing himself to become an anchor. A thing that could prevent Tenpou from losing himself. He gladly let Tenpou take charge even though it wasn't their usual dynamic, wanting to prove willing to go anywhere Tenpou led, unafraid of anything Tenpou might reveal. _I'll make this your real sanctuary_ , Kenren thought. _Not all that crap you bury yourself in. This. Me._

And then he didn't think anything, caught so completely and intensely in pleasure that everything but his awareness of his own body vanished.

He felt limp in the aftermath, almost floating. He would have laid there with his eyes closed forever, sweaty and entangled with Tenpou and not minding a bit, but before long he felt Tenpou get up. There was the sound of fabric rustling; then the click of a lighter, the scent of smoke. Kenren opened his eyes and found Tenpou holding a lit cigarette out to him. He took it, and Tenpou lit another for himself then relaxed against the headboard, idly running his free hand through Kenren's hair. Kenren inhaled the smoke and closed his eyes again, almost perfectly content.

Almost.

"Why didn't you want me to say it?" he murmured.

He lay there, smoking and feeling Tenpou's fingers in his hair, for a long moment before an answer came. "Have you ever felt," Tenpou said quietly, "as though something... let's say fate, was set against you? As if every time you tried... Suppose you were to find something. Something important. And if you showed it to someone, or even so much as claimed it in your own thoughts, that act of claiming it would damage it. Make it less, somehow. Or cause it to be taken away from you, the moment you drew notice to the fact that you had it.” He paused. “Sometimes I feel like the eyes of all the universe are watching me this way."

Kenren glanced up, found himself intently watched. Tenpou's face was an open book. But his words were, "It's better to leave it unsaid."

Kenren nodded. "Then we'll leave it unsaid."

A small smile crept onto Tenpou's face. "Only don't sleep now." Kenren raised an eyebrow at him. "Your brow, the moon, this lantern we sleep with. Stay awake with these lights. Don't sleep."

Kenren smiled, recognizing the first poem Tenpou had quoted. “All right all right, I get it already,” he said. Unsaid... but not unknown. "I won't go back to sleep."


End file.
